Uni-the-Unicorn!
Hero
You are factually incorrect. The fact that you gain HP every level is where the rules are telling you it is more than meat points. The level represent combat experience and the improved ability to avoid serious damage. Simple getting older and more experienced doesn’t suddenly make my body 10x tougher.I am familiar with the passage, and regret that you felt it necessary to copy the whole thing out again. The thing is, that whole passage is what I described earlier as "a description of the rules, rather than the actual rules."
To put it another way, anyone can say how they think the rules work, but if the actual rules disagree with that interpretation, then that person is factually incorrect. I believe there's another passage, in more than one edition, which describes fighters as natural leaders who are capable of protecting their vulnerable teammates; but without mechanical support for that concept, it falls on its face. You can say that intelligence helps you fire a bow, but we know that's a lie, for exactly the same reason.
It doesn't matter who says that luck, a sixth sense, or magical protection accounts for any amount of HP. We know the formula for HP, and those factors simply aren't involved. We also know how luck, a sixth sense, and magical protections are actually reflected in terms of game mechanics (elsewhere in the book); and HP are not involved any way. Gygax's long-winded opinion is factually incorrect; and if that's what he was attempting for his rules to represent, then he failed spectacularly.
If I hit my dad or my grandfather with a sword, it doesn’t matter that one is a combat trained veteran and one is not. Everyone understands that at a visceral level. The only plausible explanation in D&D is that your not really being hit.
also, the fact constitution is used in HP calculation and your class also tells you it is not meat points. If Strength and size were used, you might have an argument. But having a good constitution doesn’t make you more or less likely to survive a sword swing in RL, and again we all understand that at a visceral level. And Class should have nothing to do with the calculation if it was meat.
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